Please pass the word – the Del-Mi Merit Badge University will be held this weekend (March 9 & 10). If you caught an earlier communication showing this to be May 9 & 10, that was supposed to be March not May!

Del-Mi District is hosting its annual Merit Badge University, this weekend, March 9th and 10th at Carmel High School. Over 500 Merit Badge slots are available for Scouts to take Merit Badges ranging from Swimming to Nuclear Science.

What: Del-Mi Merit Badge University

Where: Carmel High School (520 E. Main Street, Carmel) – Door 13

When: Three sessions are available. Some merit badge classes span across 2 sessions.

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In the Washington Post, from last year that I have been meaning to write about, a fascinating article about emotional isssues that kids in college are facing. The focus of the article that the title suggest the emphasis is on women’s college sports. The content is far broader, even though the persons interviewed are women’s college coaches and affiliate personnel.

One strong passage caught my eye.

Talk to coaches, and they will tell you they believe their players are harder to teach, and to reach, and that disciplining is beginning to feel professionally dangerous. Not even U-Conn.’s virtuoso coach, Geno Auriemma, is immune to this feeling, about which he delivered a soliloquy at the Final Four.

“Recruiting enthusiastic kids is harder than it’s ever been,” he said. “. . . They haven’t even figured out which foot to use as a pivot foot and they’re going to act like they’re really good players. You see it all the time.”

Some of the aspects emphasized apply equally well to scouters working with scouts.

It doesn’t take a social psychologist to perceive that at least some of today’s coach-player strain results from the misunderstanding of what the job of a coach is, and how it’s different from that of a parent. This is a distinction that admittedly can get murky. The coach-player relationship has odd complexities and semi-intimacies, yet a critical distance too. It’s not like any other bond or power structure. Parents may seek to smooth a path, but coaches have to point out the hard road to be traversed, and it’s not their job to find the shortcuts. Coaches can’t afford to feel sorry for players; they are there to stop them from feeling sorry for themselves.

Coaches are not substitute parents; they’re the people parents send their children to for a strange alchemical balance of toughening yet safekeeping, dream facilitating yet discipline and reality check. The vast majority of what a coach teaches is not how to succeed but how to shoulder unwanted responsibility and deal with unfairness and diminished role playing, because without those acceptances success is impossible.

Here is a key conclusion.

The bottom line is that coaches have a truly delicate job ahead of them with iGens. They must find a way to establish themselves as firm allies of players who are more easily wounded than ever before yet demand they earn praise through genuine accomplishment.

From this article we can draw a couple key conclusions:

In our role as scouters, we can help prepare our scouts, boys and girls, for their college experience. We can teach them to deal with “unwanted responsibility” such as cleaning up after dinner or cleaning the latrine and with “unfairness” such as being assigned camp tasks too many times when others have not had their rotation.

We can be the “toughening yet safekeeping, dream facilitating yet discipline and reality check” that is parents to provide for their own kids.

We can be “firm allies” of scouts “who are more easily wounded than ever before yet demand they earn praise through genuine accomplishiment” such as rank advancement, BSA Life Guard training, mile swim patch, or high adventure.

So you were recruited to serve as an adult leader for “one hour per week.” Several years later you are amazed by not only what your scouts have learned but what you have learned, too. Do you feel like you have grown as a leader? Have you learned personnel management skills? Project management skills? Adaptation to adversity? Have you taken leadership training courses, such as Den Leader Specific Training or Wood Badge?

When you look at your resume for your next job application, have you included your scouting leadership positions like you would any other job? Why not?

Prospective employers want to see applicants that have challenged themselves and learned along the way. They want to see applicants that have learned lessons from failure, especially on someone else’s dime.

When you go back to your resume, consider the following topics for inclusion on your resume:

Job description

Risk management

Team leadership and delegation

Problems solved

Leadership training and mentoring

But, don’t look at this only as a way to boost your resume. Look at resume enhancement as a means of recruiting new volunteers. When you talk to scout parents about their life experiences on campouts or during activity breaks, ask them what they do for a living and what their dreams for the future are. If they want to move up into management, suggest that scouting teaches those skills and is a way to get experience. Scouting is as much an experimental lab for adults as it is for scouts.

So look for scout parents who want to grow and recruit them based on what it can do for their careers (never mind networking with scouters who are extremely successful in their professional pursuits.

So make sure you know your scout parents’ resumes. It will work wonders for you.

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Setting the Stage for Continued Growth

[INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA, February 8] District Leaders, mentors, family and friends assembled at the 2017 North Star District Awards ceremony to offer well-deserved congratulations to the Leadership team and to recognize members of the District for their commitment to service. Included in these honors was the highlight of the Journey to Excellence Gold Award status earned by North Star with the overall highest score in the Council and an announcement that North Star’s contribution led to the Crossroads of America Council being the highest scoring council nationally, too. A highlighted list of honored outgoing leadership and 2017 Award Winners can be found below.

2018 District Objectives

As 2018 North Star District Committee Chair Mark Maucere outlined in his keynote address, there are four pillars on which the upcoming leadership team will be focused in order to build on the success of this past year, which are:

Membership Growth. This includes development of strategies to communicate with Charters and Schools as well as in assisting our Units with Leadership Outreach and Program Awareness. This work will help keep up the interest with new/prospective Cub Scouts and their parents in the competition for time and attention with other extracurricular activities. Our new Membership Chair is soon to be named.

Increased Unit Commissioner Involvement. Stephen Heath is the 2018 District Commissioner, and he is looking forward to building the Unit Commissioner team and for these Unit Commissioners to create stronger and more cohesive working relationships with each of our District Units as “one team.”

Program Offering. Mark Pishon as 2018 District Program Chair will bring a passion and energy to this critical pillar to enhance our current program offering as well as expand in areas that will further encourage greater recruitment, participation and retention.

Communication. Cheryl Bilsland will be serving as 2018 Communication Chair and brings corporate digital marketing and Toastmasters communications mentorship experiences to the role. We look forward to building upon and expanding our communication and outreach presence in a way that best meets the needs of the District.

Mark emphasized his “open door policy” and is humbly looking forward to meeting and working with each of you, thanking you for your service, insight, talent, energy and involvement in order to grow our District in 2018.

2017 North Star District
Leadership and Award Winners

We want to thank our 2017 District Key 3 team for their dedicated servant leadership:

John Wiebke District Chair

Con Sullivan District Executive

Jeffrey Heck District Commissioner

Hearty congratulations and gratitude for your service, goes to the following 2017 District Award Winners:

Alec Damer

T514

Merle H. Miller Eagle Scout Project of the Year Award

Austin Damer

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Judge John Price Outstanding Eagle Scout of the Year Award

Agrayan Gupta

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Dr. Bernard Harris SUPERNOVA Award (the first awarded in North Star District, based on our information)